CHAPTER 5: Fifty Thousand Reasons

Ana's POV

I had been at my desk twenty minutes when HR walked in and shut the door behind her.

"Settling in?" she asked, but her eyes were doing something her smile wasn't.

"It's going as planned." I kept my voice light. "The launch timeline holds. I'll have the full rollout deck ready by Friday."

"Good. Good." She sat on the edge of the chair across from me, like she didn't plan to stay, like she only had one thing to say and wanted it gone from her mouth. "Can I ask you something, off the record?"

"Of course."

She leaned in. "What is going on between you and Mr. Strauss?"

My pen stopped moving. "Nothing."

"Ana." Her voice dropped. "I have worked here for four years. That man flies in, signs things, flies out. He doesn't learn our names. And yesterday he canceled his entire schedule and announced he is staying. The day after you started." She studied my face. "And the way he looked at you in that conference room. Like he already knew you. So I will ask again. Have the two of you met before?"

Have the two of you met before. The same question he had asked me. Now hers.

"No," I said, and I meant it. "I never met Mr. Strauss until I walked into that room. I swear it."

She held my eyes a moment longer. Then she nodded and stood.

"All right," she said. "But people are already talking. Be careful."

She left. I stared at the door.

Talking about what? There is nothing to talk about.

I buried myself in work to drown the unease. Spreadsheets, ad spend, the launch calendar. I was so deep in it that I didn't hear the door, didn't hear the footsteps, didn't notice anything at all until a cup of coffee appeared on my desk, set down by a hand I would have known anywhere.

I gasped before I could stop myself.

He stood over me. Very close. The boss. Caspian Strauss, in a charcoal suit with no tie, staring at me with those dark blue eyes that seemed to take in everything and give back nothing.

"You looked like you needed it," he said.

"I... thank you." My heart was doing something foolish. I wrapped both hands around the cup just to have somewhere to put them. "You didn't have to."

"I know." He didn't move away. The warmth of him reached me across the small space between us, and I caught the clean dark scent of him, and something deep in my body stirred without my permission, like a memory I couldn't place. "Most things I do, I don't have to."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I said nothing, and the silence stretched, and it wasn't an empty silence. It was full. Heavy. Charged like the air before lightning.

He turned to leave. At the door he stopped, one hand on the frame, and looked back at me over his shoulder.

"You really don't remember, do you?" he asked.

"Remember what?"

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes, gone before I could name it.

"Nothing," he said. And he walked out.

I sat there with my coffee going cold and my skin still warm.

Remember what? He had asked if we had met before. Now this. What was I supposed to be remembering? I would have remembered a man like that. No woman alive forgets a man who looks at her the way he just had.

I shook it off. I had bigger problems than a beautiful boss talking in riddles. I had nowhere to live.

After work I started the search I had been dreading. I had been in a hotel since I moved, burning money I didn't have, and the job had needed me to start so fast I hadn't had time to find a place.

So I sat on the hotel bed with my laptop and scrolled listings, sorting by the only filter that mattered. Cheap. Cheaper. Cheapest. Every one was a small box in a bad part of town, and I told myself it didn't matter, that I had started over from less.

Just then my phone buzzed with a bank notification.

I almost didn't look. Then I did, and my whole body went still.

A deposit. Fifty thousand dollars.

I read it again. The numbers didn't change. Five, zero, zero, zero, zero. Into the account that had held barely enough for one month of rent an hour ago.

The sender made my stomach twist.

Strauss Technology Limited.

My company. My new company. There had to be a mistake. Nobody deposits fifty thousand dollars into a new hire's account three days in. Bonuses didn't work like that. Nothing worked like that.

I didn't sleep much.

The next morning I went straight to HR before I even sat down.

"Did the company pay out a bonus?" I asked. "A signing bonus, a relocation package, anything?"

She frowned. "No. Nothing like that has been processed. Why?"

"No reason." I forced a smile. "Just checking my paperwork."

Back at my desk I pulled up the alert one more time and stared at it until the letters blurred. A mistake. It has to be a mistake. A wrong account number. Something. People didn't just hand me money. The last time a man had left money for me, it had been a few bills on a nightstand and a note that called me a whore.

My face went hot at the thought, and I didn't know why.

I stood up. I wasn't going to sit here guessing.

His office door was open. He was at the window when I knocked on the frame, his back to me, the whole city spread out behind the glass.

"Mr. Strauss. There's been a mistake. Fifty thousand dollars was deposited into my account from the company. I came to report it so it can be reversed."

He turned around slowly. He didn't look surprised. He didn't look anything.

"It is not a mistake," he said.

I blinked. "Then I don't understand."

"You just moved cities." He said it like he was reading a file he had memorized. "You are living in a hotel, burning cash you don't have. You need an apartment. A deposit. Furniture. Clothes for the role. The money is so you don't have to take the worst place you can find just to stop bleeding." He walked closer, unhurried. "Consider it part of your package."

I couldn't breathe right. Everything he had just said was true. Every single thing. The hotel. The hunting. The cheapest filter. Things I had told no one.

"How," I managed. "How could you possibly know all of that?"

He stopped in front of me. The corner of his mouth lifted, just barely, and his eyes held mine like he had all the time in the world and I was the only thing worth spending it on.

"I am here to get to know my employees," he said softly. "Remember?"